Your eyes do not deceive you. There was indeed a Final Fantasy anime. A fan of the genre myself, when I discovered this, I was on Amazon two seconds later. This is a lesson for any anime fans out there. Research before you order this shit. The show ran from 2001 to 2002, only twenty-five episodes long, and boy does it feel long. Never before have I been so disappointed from the shameless use of the Final Fantasy name brand, and that includes that alien ghost crap in The Spirits Within in 2001 and the where’s my mommy Advent Children in 2005. But don’t take my word for it; it’s time to jump into the Anime Empire’s first review.
The show starts off in Japan, off the coast of Sadogashima. Two giant monsters emerge from a pillar of energy, which has attracted some scientist to investigate. Just a stereotypical day in Japan then, seven o’clock wake up, seven ten have breakfast, seven twenty prepare for Godzilla attack. The first monster, a dragon with a gun for a nose and propellers on its wings (why, my God, why), makes short work of humanities defenses. Fighter jets and naval cruisers explode in the distance. Luckily, a second dragon appears, a white, snakey, bug like one, and the two face off in an epic battle. After about thirty seconds of the beasts groaning at each other, which sound like a rumbling stomach and bad insect noise, they shoot each other and the battle ends then and there. Sorry if my sarcasm doesn’t translate well into text. This is when I really wish I could say that this anime ends, but unfortunately that’s just the opening.
From here my sanity slowly drifts away. Enter Fabula (first name that pisses me off), a witch of sorts who lives in a giant clam with her mystic orb. She opens each episode with a summary and ends it with a teaser for the next episode. Introducing the journey, she proclaims that twelve years have passed since the ‘Pillar of the Darkness of Chaos’, the one that the monsters popped out of, appeared on earth. And so the story begins, or as she calls it ‘a new wandering is about to begin’. Actually that describes this anime pretty well. We’re just wandering round looking for Final Fantasy references, both big and small. None the hell yet.
We return to Sadogashima, the Pillar still off the coast, where we encounter the two main characters, the twins Ai and Yu Hayakawa, whose parents were the scientist investigating on the day of the monster attack. The parents, in those years, investigated a place called Wonderland (Second name that pisses me off), which they traveled to by a ghost train, a living train with eyeballs all over it and a drill at the front. Let the oddness of that statement sink in a little before continuing. Anyway, moving on, one day while exploring the monster infested insane asylum, that we will soon become acquainted with, they don’t come back. Shocker, who could have imagined? Not leaving a babysitter or any guardians for the kids, the twins start to wonder where mommy and daddy went. So of course, they set out on a journey to find them, getting on said ghost train. Does this sound like any Final Fantasy ever made? NO! This premise makes no sense, not saying that every Final makes sense but still, come on. The parents wrote a book on this place, so it’s not a secret. It’s out there, on the streets, in book stores or on the internet for people to discover that that this train arrives at 12:13:13 on the night of a full moon to BRING YOU TO WONDERLAND. If two kids can find this out, why the hell can’t the authorities? The kids say that people have constantly gone missing down in the subway so it is a police matter. Why is no one guarding this place, why are there no soldiers? There is so much wrong with this. After twelve years of a giant monster spitting pillar of energy being beside the coast of this place, wouldn’t they evacuate or at least pay more attention to this place? And so my head explodes. (Before anyone mentions the so called ‘agent’ coming up, Balls, what idiots send ONE AGENT, but i’ll get to that.)
Maybe the characters are charismatic and interesting enough so the plot doesn’t bother me so much. The twins are …..No that about covers it, they are. They are dull beyond imagination, Ai complains constantly and pouts at every second statement to show her disapproval, and Yu is quite and timid to the point of non-existence. Now these characters are given more to do later on, but that’s no defense when you find out what it is (Hint: magic bag that vomits random shit out to help for Ai and Chocobo mind reading powers for Yu.) I will admit, the chocobo, the ‘Bird of Happiness’ as their parents book describes it, is amusing. Trying to eat AI’s hair, running about like a crazy thing, it really cracks me up.
Then we come to Lisa Pacifist (Strike three, you can’t name shit right show), an ‘agent’ and martial artist of sorts. We never find out what she’s an agent of, which really pisses me off. The idea that she is an agent of anything is laughable though. Firstly, no gun or uniform, then we come to her skills of surveillance, which within a minute are undone by two twelve year olds. But the real terror comes when she enters Wonderland. The trio, Ai, Yu and Lisa, are attacked pretty quickly by a giant mushroom shaped monster, which she FLINGS ACROSS BUILDINGS with her kigen arts. The twins, not believing this shit either, ask how the fuck she did that (minus the curse unfortunately), to which she replies it’s ‘sorta kinda like a martial art’. Balls! I do martial arts and no shit in the world does flipping giant monsters one o one.
This is where we come to the only redeemable quality of this anime, Kaze, because he so cool he don’t need a second name (trying to pull off hip, failed ). Having no memories, he’s the silent warrior who really doesn’t give a shit half the time. Seeking some ‘scoundrel’, Kaze is the source of most Final Fantasy moments, summoning icons from the games including Phoenix, and having the victory music from FF7 play after his first triumph. What he does is odd however, very odd indeed. He fires summons out of his Magun, a gun that transforms out of a golden stump like thing on his arm. He places bullets of different colored sand into the gun to summon monsters…. This sounds fucked up, and it is, to the point where even Ai questions the point of a ‘Dirt Gun’, but you don’t question the only piece of action in a show this dull, not yet. It’s our only dam hope at this point. The first time you see this is pretty dam interesting, but there’s a problem. NEARLY EVERY DAM EPISODE has the point where they meet a baddy, the trio can’t do anything and Kaze arrives with the Magun. He makes the same dam speech again and again and again, only pausing if the dam gun decides not to work at all, which it will then later. The speech goes as follows:
‘It has moved …. (Several second dramatic pause EVERYTIME)(Gun animates out of stump). Soil is my power! (in a real by the power of Greyskull moment). The soil charge triad to use on you has been decided’ He then proceeds to explain why each of the three God forsaken bullets are important. I don’t give a dam, just fire the dam gun. This takes so long that future baddies realize they can just attack him during his twenty minute monologue. Anyway, the episode ends with everyone pretty dam amazed that the mysterious figure of Kaze just shot a bird out his gun (Phoenix) which exploded a monster from the inside.
This is bad. There are no words to describe my pain at this series. The plot follows the basic line of big bad sending minion after minion after minion to kill them all, because … he’s evil. This big bad is some gluttonous monster in the shape of a child prince, his generals being of various elements, earth mushroom man, plant lady, fish boy and so on. He has his own Kaze character as well, the ‘scoundrel’ the actual Kaze is looking for. I won’t spoil too much, just to say plot developments occur and shit happens. But this review is on episode one, mainly, and from this, I really have to ask, why watch any more of this anime. The animation is fine, making use of 2D and 3D graphics. The areas the characters visit are shit ass crazy, but within Final Fantasy standards. The story is dull, saved only by a two minute action sequence at the end where Kaze summons different monster icons, including Ifirit, Bahamut and so on. Is it worth following? I would recommend it to fans of the game, but to be honest, IT IS BAD. There’s only one way to end this review and that’s to say, moving on…
Next time: Angel Beats
